The testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:3 (NIV)
Faith holds sway in the castle of the believer’s heart, but it is always under attack. There is always some new assault being launched on faith by the enemy of your soul.
Don’t be afraid of this struggle. It helps to think about planting flower bulbs. You select the bulb, put it in the ground, and cover it with dirt. Suppose the bulb could talk, what would it tell you? “I’ve been dumped on. I cannot see the light of day. I’m surrounded by dirt—smothered.”
But the bulb has life in it. If it were a stone, it would simply be buried. But since it is a bulb, the life within it presses up through the dirt toward the light.
That’s a marvelous picture of faith. You are born again of the living seed of the Word of God. Your faith will be assaulted and dumped on. If you did not have the life of God in you, your faith would be over. But living faith pushes upwards toward the light, and the extraordinary thing is that during this process, the thing that buried it (the dirt) ends up contributing to its growth.
That is the reason why James said, “The testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (1:3). The same testing that will sometimes bury you, will turn out to be the cause of much growth in your life. So, don’t despise the testing. Let it finish its work in you.
Has your faith been tested recently? How did you respond?
